How High the Moon

Details

Shiro Kuramata (1934-1991)
How High the Moon
impressed '27 7 17'
nickel-plated expanded steel mesh
27½ x 58¾ x 32¼in. (69.5 x 149.4 x 82cm.)
Designed in 1986, executed by Terada Tekkojo Ltd., Tokyo, this work is number six from an edition of thirty

Provenance

Paul Hughes Fine Arts, London.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003.

Literature

M. Aikawa (ed.), Shiro Kuramata, exh. cat., Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 1996 (another example illustrated, p. 181).
A. von Vegesack (ed.), 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection, exh. cat., Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 1996 (another example illustrated, p. 201).

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Lot Essay

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Mieko Kuramata and dated 1 August 2003.

Named after a jazz piece by Duke Ellington, the gleaming dematerialised surface of How High The Moon evokes pale moonlight and weightlessness. Whilst offering an outline, the mesh denies volume and produces a sense of disengaged space, erasing the chair's presence. By reducing the form to simple cubic elements, Kuramata translates a weighty symbol of bourgeois life into an idiom of Postmodern industrial aesthetics.

'This mesh piece expresses a plane that barely holds itself up after all the excess parts have been subtracted from the board. This is why people call me a minimalist; but I also sometimes do the very opposite. When steel mesh is surfaced with chrome enamel, it shines and seems to proliferate. I'm working out a process of subtracting and multiplying at the same time. The concept of decoration is weak inside me, but, by using mesh that proliferates like a cell within the process of eliminating, I'm discovering my own style of decoration.' (S. Kuramata quoted, 1988, in M. Aikawa (ed.), Shiro Kuramata, Tokyo, 1996, p.181)

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